resent age. They are, therefore, almost universally neglected,
whitewashed by custodes, shot at by soldiers, suffered to drop from the
walls piecemeal in powder and rags by society in general; but, which is
an advantage more than counterbalancing all this evil, they are not
often "restored." What is left of them, however fragmentary, however
ruinous, however obscured and defiled, is almost always _the real
thing_; there are no fresh readings: and therefore the greatest
treasures of art which Europe at this moment possesses are pieces of old
plaster on ruinous brick walls, where the lizards burrow and bask, and
which few other living creatures ever approach; and torn sheets of dim
canvas, in waste corners of churches; and mildewed stains, in the shape
of human figures, on the walls of dark chambers, which now and then an
exploring traveller causes to be unlocked by their tottering custode,
looks hastily round, and retreats from in a weary satisfaction at his
accomplished duty.

Sec. CXXXIX. Many of the pictures on the ceilings and walls of the Ducal
Palace, by Paul Veronese and Tintoret, have been more or less reduced,
by neglect, to this condition. Unfortunately they are not altogether
without reputation, and their state has drawn the attention of the
Venetian authorities and academicians. It constantly happens, that
public bodies who will not pay five pounds to preserve a picture, will
pay fifty to repaint it:[162] and when I was at Venice in 1846, there
were two remedial operations carrying on, at one and the same time, in
the two buildings which contain the pictures of greatest value in the
city (as pieces of color, of greatest value in the world), curiously
illustrative of this peculiarity in human nature. Buckets were set on
the floor of the Scuola di San Rocco, in every shower, to catch the rain
which came through the pictures of Tintoret on the ceiling; while in the
Ducal Palace, those of Paul Veronese were themselves laid on the floor
to be repainted; and I was myself present at the re-illumination of the
breast of a white horse, with a brush, at the end of a stick five feet
long, luxuriously dipped in a common house-painter's vessel of paint.

This was, of course, a large picture. The process has already been
continued in an equally destructive, though somewhat more delicate
manner, over the whole of the humbler canvases on the ceiling of the
Sala del Gran Consiglio; and I heard it threatened when I was last in